Chapter 2 Zoe Spring 2025
Zoe
The crunch of tyres on the gravel outside Highdown Hall is followed by a car door slamming. Zoe, Steph and Sara look at each other.
‘That’ll be Fi,’ says Sara, taking her arm from Zoe’s shoulders.
Since she arrived a few hours ago, Sara has taken charge – making constant cups of tea, as if that would wash away her grief.
Or maybe it was to assuage Sara’s own guilt for not being here before now, Zoe thinks.
Then she pauses. We’ve all lost our mum, she reminds herself, we just cope in different ways.
It just all feels so sudden, despite the months of waiting.
Opposite them, in the drawing room, Steph turns in her chair to stare out of the long windows that line the front of their childhood home.
Behind her Zoe sees the lights of a sleek dark car moving away from the house.
It curves around the old stone fountain, empty for the last decade, and continues down the driveway, zigzagging around the larger potholes.
Steph turns her gaze back to the room and Zoe watches her eyes flick away from the stag heads above the fireplace, their grandfather’s trophies – and glance over at the picture frames on the grand piano in the far corner of the room.
Her legs are crossed and she’s tapping her foot repeatedly.
Steph’s older than Zoe remembers. Her hair is almost entirely grey now, lines bracketing her mouth, criss-crossing her forehead.
She always thought her eldest sister had blue eyes like her own, but they’re puddle-coloured, a luminous grey, as they dart around the room.
‘Hello?’ Fiona’s voice calls.
‘In here,’ says Sara.
Steph seems to press herself further into the velvet armchair and recrosses her legs. Nobody moves when the drawing-room door opens.
‘Where is she?’ says Fiona, standing on the threshold in a smart navy dress, carrying a briefcase. She speaks in capital letters.
Zoe glances at Steph, who’s picking the skin on her hand. She can’t say the words again. Sara stands up and squeezes Fiona’s. ‘I’m sorry, Fi, she went this morning. The funeral home people have just collected her.’
‘What?’ Fiona staggers slightly and leans against the sideboard, dropping her briefcase. ‘She’s gone?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry.’ Sara guides Fiona to the armchair next to Steph.
Fiona sits down, covers her face with her hands and mumbles something.
When she eventually looks up, her face is streaky, her eyes bright.
‘I literally got the first flight out of Singapore. I left the office as soon as you called,’ she says to Zoe.
‘You should have phoned me before, so I had time to say goodbye.’ Her voice catches on the last word.
‘Fi, calm down.’ Sara leans forward to rest her hand on her knee. ‘I didn’t get that chance either. Nor did Steph. She died before any of us could get here. It was very sudden.’
Fiona grips Sara’s hand, and then they hug. They fit well together somehow, Zoe thinks. They’d always got on as children.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Fiona says, her head tipped back. ‘How was she?’ She looks back to Zoe, and swallows. ‘At the end?’ Under the smart outfit and the make-up, she looks exhausted. She covers her mouth with a perfectly manicured hand, the red nail polish a blood stain on her face.
‘There was nothing dramatic. No last words. She just stopped . . .’ Zoe rubs her eyes.
She knows she should have called them days ago.
But it felt like defeat, admitting that their mother was dying.
And there was something fitting about it, that after all those years alone with her mother, all those months caring for her, she should be the only one with her when she died.
The guilt twists inside her as she sees Fiona’s distraught face.
She looks around at the three of them filling a room that has been empty for years.
‘But why didn’t you call us before? I could have been here. I wanted to be here,’ says Fiona.
‘Fi,’ says Sara, shaking her head.
But Zoe can’t stop herself. She jerks her head and her heart starts to thud.
‘You could have come at any time. She’s been seriously ill for more than a year.
No one was stopping you.’ Anger soothes her guilt.
She twists the rings around her thumb and sees Sara and Fi catch each other’s eyes and look away.
‘I thought the dying knew when the time was coming and held on until everyone had gathered around their bed to say goodbye,’ says Fiona quietly. ‘I thought I’d have time.’ She falls into the chair and Sara sits back next to Zoe.
‘It’s not a movie, Fi,’ says Zoe, hugging a cushion, feeling her anger fall away as quickly as it came.
‘People die when they’re ready. She hadn’t seen you all in so long.
Especially you.’ She looks at Steph. ‘Not even a short visit or a call. And you’re the closest.’ Steph looks into her lap and pushes herself further back into the armchair.
‘Steady on,’ says Sara. ‘I tried to help. When you had that work thing a while ago, I came and sat with Mum for the weekend.’
‘One weekend in two years,’ Zoe mutters, but feels her heart constrict again. She knows she’s being unfair and horrible but she needs to blame someone, something, now that their mother has gone.
‘It’s really hard with the children and everything . . .’ Sara trails off.
A chime from the grandfather clock reverberates through the room, making the other three visibly jump.
It is so part of the fabric of her day that Zoe barely notices it.
She watches them count the eleven other chimes, each lost in their own memories.
The clock – and its partner in the hall – were their father’s passion.
He had wound them every Saturday morning.
She’d stood next to him when she was small, as he opened the glass door, and inserted the key near the number three.
As she got older, he taught her how to push the key into the winding hole, his hand holding the clock face steady while she turned the crank, reminding her to check that the weights were rising.
She’s done it on her own since he’s been gone.
Tears sting her eyes and she blinks them away.
It’s their mother she should be thinking of now, but seeing her go has taken her back to their father’s death five years ago.
That was the last time they were all together at the house.
But Mum was here then to tell them what to do, to fuss over Fiona and particularly Sara who brought the newborn twins with her.
Fiona is glancing around the room. When the vibrations eventually fall away, she says, ‘It’s lovely to see Highdown again. A little bit older and tireder but still here . . .’ She trails off.
‘Like all of us,’ says Sara with a small smile.
Zoe looks around the room too. She hasn’t done more than glance around the door at it for the past few months.
Suddenly she sees it through her sisters’ eyes.
It’s not just the layers of dust on everything.
The bald poinsettia encircled by leaves on the grand piano.
The blackened silver photo frames. The rugs so threadbare, you can see the parquet floor underneath.
The curtains punctuated by moth holes. Huge cobweb garlands decorate the oak beams. Two mottled damp patches are growing from the sides of the French windows, almost meeting in the middle.
Through the windows, what remains of her father’s giant topiary ducks stare down reproachfully at her from the stone gateway leading into the formal garden.
Highdown Hall, she suddenly acknowledges with a twinge of guilt, has seen better days.
She should have done more to keep it going, it was her responsibility with Mum so ill.
Guilt needles at her again. She should have done so much more.
A gentle silence falls over them. Zoe wonders what they’re thinking.
Is it about all the times they’ve been in this room together, playing games as children, the fire lit, Mum and Dad here with them, making tea and crumpets, Terry and June stretched out on the huge hearth, the dog jostling for space and retreating when they scratched him on the nose?
Or when Mum and Dad would host extravagant parties, and she and Sara would lie on the gallery looking down into the hall as glamorous people arrived?
They’d go to sleep to the tang of cigar smoke and the sound of their mother playing the piano, laughter and chinking glasses.
Her eyes are full with tears. Missy slinks past the door and pauses to survey the room. This is usually her domain, with a choice of seats to curl up on. But she appears to welcome the newcomers, strutting in and wending in and out of their legs.
‘Beautiful tabby,’ says Steph, reaching down to stroke her. Missy stops and lifts her chin to be rubbed. ‘Lovely colouring.’
‘She’s Terry and June’s granddaughter,’ says Zoe.
‘Terry and June,’ says Sara. ‘I’d almost forgotten all about them. God I loved them when we were young. They must have been gone years.’ Zoe smiles at her, surprised and pleased she remembers. ‘They were part of the reason I got cats for my children.’
Silence falls over them again. They can’t just keep sitting here. Zoe gets up and walks towards the door. ‘Mum left instructions for her funeral and stuff. It’s in an envelope in her room. We might as well start looking at it. Now we’re together.’
‘Surely that can wait until tomorrow, Zoe?’ Sara says. ‘It’s late now, we should be going to bed. Especially poor Fi who’s been flying all day.’
‘I got a few hours’ sleep,’ says Fiona. ‘I was in business.’
‘Nice for some,’ says Zoe, stopping herself from rolling her eyes. She’s being unfair, she knows it. She tries to physically push down the rising resentment. Be kind. Be kind.
‘It was the only seat they had at such short notice,’ Fiona says, wiping her hand across the side table. ‘Zoe’s right though, there’s a lot to organise now. And I’m glad I’m here to help.’